It was late August in one of the hottest summers in many years, when I got a phone call from an elderly couple in Moscow. I agreed to meet with them at their house to see what service I could provide.
They showed me the hide-a-bed and set of snow tires that they wanted to sell because would not need them at their retirement condo in Arizona. When I asked them if that was all they had to sell, they started telling me what they had been doing:
They had hauled all of the small items to charity and filled two dumpsters, when they remembered that the attic was full of “stuff” that had been there when they purchased the home 52 years ago. They were afraid that this would affect the sale of the home, so they rented a U-haul truck and spent two weeks with him working in the attic (it was over 100 degrees outside, so you can imagine how hot it was in the attic), handing things down to her in the garage (where she was constantly covered with falling dust). They filled the fourteen foot U-haul twice and their dump bills showed that they had hauled almost three thousand pounds to the landfill. According to them, this job “Almost killed us both”.
When I asked why they had not called on me for the items in the attic, they replied “It was just old stuff that no one would want, like old trunks, metal toys, crocks, and other things that no one uses any more”.
Postscript: (Insert grawlix here!!)